EDIT: Note that this thread is about the support of fusion, NOT about its development. Please stay on the topic of what BMD and Fusion users can do to improve the situation. (tutorials, user content, support staff on forums etc)

Heya,

Long term Fusioneer (from back in the DPS velocity and 4.04d days) and long term comper (from 5d/shake to Nuke). Been back in Fu land for the last two years building film vfx pipelines around it. And been doing some tutorials for Fusion. Beyond the fantastic work being done on porting it to other platforms (thank you for linux support!) and amazing work by the tiny dev team,

what is going on with Fusion's support?

* Support is entirely by volunteers on the forum* BMD is visibly absent from the forums * No official training material* No communication / feedback process to talk about long term ideas* No proper documentation (scripting SDK? Or just the regular SDK? Fixing all the mistakes in the current help PDFs?)

Right now the forums here are flooded with new potential users that are asking the basic questions that should have been answered by a Fusion product specialist. Instead its left for new comers (and some really heavy-weight compers too) to answer the questions between them.

Communities like https://www.steakunderwater.com/ have now made one of the biggest contributions to the Fu landscape in years in the form of Reactor (https://gitlab.com/WeSuckLess/Reactor) and this stuff should be promoted, endorsed, supported by BMD. Just look at Reactor's growing content; its clear there IS a community ready to develop, push fusion's envelope and work with you guys.

If the bullet point list above is too negative, here's some positive remedies:

* Hire staff to answer basic support on the forums* Hire product specialists that could support companies looking to integrate fusion* Support (financially, or through the company structure) the communities. * Official Training. (shoot content on BMD cameras and promote them in vfx tutorials)* Partner/collaborate with content creators (Like Vito etc) on training material.

I like to use the comparison to Native Instruments tool called Reaktor (name no relevance here); its a node based tool for building musical instruments and effects. What's made that tool invaluable is not the program itself, but the 4000! available modules (like macros and fuses in Fu) various users have made over the years. People buy it regardless of its lackluster update policies, its value is almost exclusively derived from the user content you get access to when you buy it.

Fusion is a tremendously powerful tool that rivals and even surpasses the industry standard of Nuke in many ways. But with Fusion's modern core, faster and more flexible 3d system, clever GPU usage makes very much relevant today; and tomorrow.

Another long term fusioneer going back to 3.something that agrees with Mr Alan Bovine wholeheartedly. Don't be stingy and pay talented people to make content for Fusion. Be demanding, don't expect it to look anything less than spectacular.

Support is lacking indeed. I have been freelancing for the same company for a while now, and many lighting and compositing artists have passed along and had to deal with a wonky version of Fusion for a long time (still do). Crashing left and right. These are also freelancers and it was their first encounter with Fusion and not a very good one at that. How's that for bad publicity? The next to zero response from a BMD official on this forum during the horrendous crash fest that was the initial release of Fusion 9 will not be forgotten easily by the users.

The closed beta section in here is an outrage. Give the people access to these betas and not just a dormant happy few. Install a proper bug reporting / ticketing system with the ability for other users to search through them and make it visible what the status is. It takes a lot of time to write a bug report. Respect your users! Give us access to these betas, considering the amount of bugs that Fusion suffers from. Don't make us wait half a year for an update.

Show the Fusion dev' team and Fusion some love. I wasn't waiting for that price to drop. I don't mind to pay a fair price for a stable product.

And yeah, Andrew's efforts along with Pieter are what kept the community alive.

At the risk of appearing fatalistic, I am of the belief that Blackmagic's interest (or lack thereof) in supporting this product is probably not going to change. This statement has little to do with my own selfish desires for product support and development (not that I don't have them), and has more to do more to do with the blatant realities listed above that are impossible to ignore. And just to be clear, the problem is not going to be solved by simply releasing a couple of long overdue tutorials, although that is certainly a step in the right direction.

I realize properly supporting Fusion is a major undertaking all by itself, and one which could easily consume all of the resources of a substantial company. I don't know if Blackmagic bit off more than they could chew when they acquired Eyeon, or if the software is too far outside of their core product strategy, or if they simply have buyer's remorse. However, letting Fusion falter for lack of proper support is a waste of a valuable asset -- and is not a good outcome for those trying to learn or use the software in a professional setting. It's certainly not going to help with adoption rates, market penetration and capturing market share from competitors.

As a 18+ year die-hard fusionista, i cannot help but agree with Alan's message content.

We all know there have been some growing pains with BMD's acquisition of Fusion, but the time has past now to settle in and bring back the legendary support it had with eyeon.

BMD, you do have the best compositing application out tyhere. Don't let it linger and leave it all up to the community to handle this. the community is after-all made up of your loyal end users and we have jobs already- its amazing how much support we're managing to do considering the lack of free time.

please take the lead with it because we love out Fusion and we know you are gaining new users- but they are not familiar with what support used to be like- what we long time users had back in the early days and yup to the acquisition. Just keep that going- otherwise those new users won't get to where us lifers are with it today- knowing its the best thing out there.

For what it's worth I'd like to add a non-Fusion user voice to this conversation, as someone who has been circling around the wagon for the better part of two years and yet has not climbed in.

I completely agree with what has been said above, and fundamentally it does feel like Blackmagic's acquisition of Fusion was motivated in large part by its desire to add a VFX component to Resolve (which it has, and will continue to). If it makes you feel any better, I'm sure that Fairlight's old user base is feeling pretty crappy about the whole thing as well.

I wholeheartedly agree with the need for more tutorials which appeal to people like me. In my opinion, VideoCopilot single handedly put Aftereffects on the map in ways that Adobe couldn't have done by itself. Myself and just about every colleague of mine started using AE by following Andrew Kramer's tutorials which, were aimed at noobs, but delivered astounding results. I have been hoping for a Fusion equivalent of Andrew Kramer to rise up, but aside from a handful of that type of tutorials, nobody has come even close to taking on that role. Without the interest from the community to teach advanced techniques in a fun and approachable way to newcomers, I think Blackmagic needs to be the driving force behind it. Even the live presentations at Siggraph and various other venues leave a lot to be desired when it comes to providing a compelling reason to adopt Fusion (and just about every presenter that I have spoken to is frustrated with Blackmagic).

The other point that I firmly agree with is that a vibrant 3rd party developer community is key. Once again, just a quick look at the thriving AEScripts.com shows just how active outside developers have been. Cinema 4D, Nuke, Maya etc. have also a plethora of low-cost indispensable 3rd party tools. One of my biggest reasons for not adopting Fusion yet is the inability to be able to continue to use some of AE's 3rd party plugins which I rely on heavily. Blackmagic should be on the forefront of encouraging, and even financing the porting of some of the most popular of those plugins (looking at you RedGiant).

I too feel very strongly that Fusion could once again be a leader in the VFX and compositing world, and I know it's in many ways far more powerful than the competition. Unfortunately, until most of what has been touched upon in this thread is addressed in some way by Blackmagic, Fusion and its user base will languish and eventually disappear.

Keep your eyes peeled on NAB this year, I think if Resolve gains a lot more VFX-oriented features this year it probably means that Blackmagic's primary interest in Fusion was always its underlying technology and code.

A full Fusion integration/assimilation into Resolve would demonstrate a complete lack of understanding for BOTH of these tools.

Not only would it make Fusions sales irrelevant; the two products are fundamentally handling very different aspects of production.

Editors are not VFX artistsVFX artists are not GradersGraders are not audio engineers.

Add them all together and you'll get something mediocre, full of compromise.

As someone looking at it from a VFX point of view; Resolve is a not very VFX and pipeline friendly, doesn't showcase any understanding of the VFX workflow requirements. And if you try to shoehorn something like Fusion into Resolve's architechture you're on the wrong path.

If you want Resolve to replace Nukestudio, give Resolve full python/lua scripting and do what Adobe did with their live link.

I love fusion, its a great tool with a bright future. So let me quote myself :

alan bovine wrote:Editors are not VFX artistsVFX artists are not GradersGraders are not audio engineers.

I don't want to sidetrack this thread into something completely unrelated, but this rigid mentality is part of the problem. Kudos if your situation allows for you to only focus on one of those disciplines, but from my side of the tracks, things look very different. Most of my colleagues and myself have had to get up to speed and get pretty damn good at all of those disciplines. The world is changing...fast.

Have respect for Editors; for their discipline is deep and requirements are specific.Have respect for VFX artists; for their discipline is deep and requirements are specific.Have respect for Graders; for their discipline is deep and requirements are specific.Have respect for Audio engineers; for their discipline is deep and requirements are specific.

We are after all talking about tools of the trade.

My focus is exclusivly on VFX; which is also Fusion's origins and speciality. If Fusion included audio engineering tools what would that tell me about the future of its place in my part of the industry ? Not trying to be a protectionist; but specialty skills and tools exist for a reason and feature bloat is a bitch.

I would happily welcome a good Resolve connection (a scripted solution), but a straight up Fusion tab in Resolve DOES mean it will loose focus when it comes high end VFX. Not to mention the development cycles for Resolve, Fairlight and Fusion would have to somehow magically be synced. I'm pretty sure there's a very good reason why we haven't seen it in Resolve yet, the two are fundamentally very different tools for different jobs. (With overlap for sure; I'll grant you that)

But please, could we stay on topic; which is what to do with Fusion's non-existing support system ?

Its a shame we cant get the same level of support they are giving to Resolve which seems to have a number of BMD staff answering the curly questions. Some may argue that Resolve is more important to them but on most of my work I spend a whole lot more time in Comp that in Grade and for me (and most of my clients/collaborators) Premiere is still my choice for editing.

Fusion is a great product and it has a really great community behind it. Some of the effort made by members of this forum to help others astounds me. I switched from Nuke to Fusion due to cost and as BMD plays a massive part in my business (Cameras, Cards, Resolve, Panels, Fusion).

I also think it doesn't hurt to raise your concerns to Fusion support (as I did a month or so ago). I have worked in I.T and often reporting from support tickets is where managements visibility is most focused (usually one of the metrics they are assessed by), I doubt they are looking much through these forums.

So send in your concerns and requests to BMD support, I think this is more likely to yield action.

I wonder if they could augment their business model for Fusion (and Resolve) with a small yearly subscription fee for upgrades to allow more development/support work? I know they want to bring this stuff to the masses and a lot of people will probably disagree with me but a one off purchase of $300 is just insane for this product.

I don't want to see this product buried or fade away as it has too much going for it and it certainly makes a positive impact to my business.

Kel Philm wrote:Its a shame we cant get the same level of support they are giving to Resolve which seems to have a number of BMD staff answering the curly questions. ...I know they want to bring this stuff to the masses and a lot of people will probably disagree with me but a one off purchase of $300 is just insane for this product...I don't want to see this product buried or fade away as it has too much going for it and it certainly makes a positive impact to my business.

Resolve's user base is growing by leaps and bounds. Not sure the same can be said about Fusion's. I think from Blackmagic's point of view, they're just following the public's interest. I don't think a higher price of admission is what they're after. If they felt that Fusion has the opportunity to be the next Nuke or AE, I'm sure they would place more focus on it.

It's a chicken/egg situation. As I stated in my previous post, I truly feel that they key to success to any application nowadays is a wealth of cool tutorials and lots of 3rd party support. At the moment Fusion doesn't have either. Question is -- who's going to blink first?

Kel Philm wrote:Its a shame we cant get the same level of support they are giving to Resolve which seems to have a number of BMD staff answering the curly questions.

That hasn't been my experience at all. Resolve support is just as unstructured as Fusion's. Most of the time I don't get a satisfactory response at all, and when I do it's usually "that's as designed". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with providing that level of support for $299, but I don't see a big difference between Resolve and Fusion.

Some of the Fusion issues are strange to me because of the volumes involved. I know nothing about Resolve's install base, but what's the average size of the 5 largest sites? What's a "big customer" for Resolve when it comes to actual seats? Like are we talking 100? 1000? I suspect not since Fusion offers multi-seat packs while Resolve does not.

alan bovine wrote:My focus is exclusivly on VFX; which is also Fusion's origins and speciality. If Fusion included audio engineering tools what would that tell me about the future of its place in my part of the industry ? Not trying to be a protectionist; but specialty skills and tools exist for a reason and feature bloat is a bitch.

I agree with you about specialization. You don't find a generalist who's as good a colorist as a dedicated colorist. Ditto for editing, sound design, composing, and VFX. That won't change until human life spans get a lot longer.

I would happily welcome a good Resolve connection (a scripted solution), but a straight up Fusion tab in Resolve DOES mean it will loose focus when it comes high end VFX.

Right, because BMD should keep its focus tight... sorry, just getting tired of how many people apparently can't differentiate between "lose" and "loose" these days.

Anyway... I don't agree. It depends on the execution. It's been done more than once; look at Rio and Mistika Ultima. Rio is billed as an all-in-one hero suite; it even has a node-based compositing system built into it. Mistika Ultima lets you do layer-based compositing on a timeline, select a group of clips in layers, and create a node-based composite from that group... which a compositor with access to the same disk can open either in another copy of Mistika or in MistikaFX (formerly MambaFX), do the required compositing in the MistikaFX node-based environment, and save it. Then Mistika just loads it as if it were any other clip in the timeline...

I have a feeling that this is where BMD is headed. There is I suspect a huge shift required for it to work correctly since Fusion uses tile-based rendering and Resolve doesn't, which is probably a large part of why we aren't hearing much from the Fusion side of the house right now.

BMD is I suspect looking to position Resolve as a top-flight hero suite that can compete with Rio and Mistika Ultima.

Note, I don't have any inside knowledge to back this; I'm just guessing based on what BMD has been up to lately as far as promoting Resolve and the new Resolve training program it's putting together.

Kel Philm wrote:What's a "big customer" for Resolve when it comes to actual seats? Like are we talking 100? 1000?

A large post house like Technicolor or Deluxe who offers grading services might have 20 or so full time colorists and perhaps 5 or so Resolve suites? Most smaller post houses in L.A. have 1 grading suite, maybe 2. Editing-wise, the numbers grow slightly, but I can't see any one post house needing 100's of Resolve licenses.

I believe that Blackmagic is playing the long game, they're more interested in long-term adoption rate than immediate returns; which is why they offer a free version which is 90% of the paid version. Another company who is following a very similar tactic is SideFX.

Rakesh Malik wrote: There is I suspect a huge shift required for it to work correctly since Fusion uses tile-based rendering and Resolve doesn't

Just to clarify, this isn't correct. There are deep fundamental issues for Fusion not working the same way Resolve does, but that isn't it.

One reason I don't think Fusion features are moving to Resolve is that the features Resolve needs Fusion doesn't have. Fusion is a framework for managing images. It's not a collection of tools. BDP could have sold Fusion as an OFX plugin suite if that were true. I can't think of a single tool from Fusion that I would want in Resolve as an OFX plugin. Not one. None of the tools in Fusion are "best in class" by themselves.

Except they aren't. That's the whole point of the thread. They're not doing anything to increase the adoption rate. They released a Linux version, which meets that criteria, but there's been nothing since other than layoffs, which is the exact opposite of interest in long-term adoption.

Chad Capeland wrote:Just to clarify, this isn't correct. There are deep fundamental issues for Fusion not working the same way Resolve does, but that isn't it.

Do you mean that Fusion is not tile-based? I'm sure there are quite a few other differences also, but that does seem like a pretty fundamental issue right there.

One reason I don't think Fusion features are moving to Resolve is that the features Resolve needs Fusion doesn't have. Fusion is a framework for managing images. It's not a collection of tools. BDP could have sold Fusion as an OFX plugin suite if that were true. I can't think of a single tool from Fusion that I would want in Resolve as an OFX plugin. Not one. None of the tools in Fusion are "best in class" by themselves.

I don't see that as a reason for not moving to Resolve, because while I agree, it's Fusion itself that is the "feature" that would benefit Resolve users, if BMD did a good job integrating it.

Chad Capeland wrote:Just to clarify, this isn't correct. There are deep fundamental issues for Fusion not working the same way Resolve does, but that isn't it.

Do you mean that Fusion is not tile-based? I'm sure there are quite a few other differences also, but that does seem like a pretty fundamental issue right there.

Correct. There are individual tools (maybe only one tool) that are tile based, but Fusion itself is not.

Also, Fusion uses a LOT more datatypes than Resolve does. Even arbitrary ones. You know more about Resolve than I do, but other than color images, what datatypes does it support in the Color page? And yeah, I know we could add a Fusion page and get rid of the Color and Delivery pages entirely, but I don't think a lot of Resolve users would like that either.

If you think about it, the amount of stuff that would have to be re-written for all of the features from Fusion to be available in Resolve, at least enough to have the feature coverage necessary to make Fusion as a standalone obsolete is HUGE. Running Fusion inside Resolve and replacing Color/Deliver with new Fusion tools that 100% covered the feature set of those tabs would be MUCH easier.

Rakesh Malik wrote:

Chad Capeland wrote:One reason I don't think Fusion features are moving to Resolve is that the features Resolve needs Fusion doesn't have. Fusion is a framework for managing images. It's not a collection of tools. BDP could have sold Fusion as an OFX plugin suite if that were true. I can't think of a single tool from Fusion that I would want in Resolve as an OFX plugin. Not one. None of the tools in Fusion are "best in class" by themselves.

I don't see that as a reason for not moving to Resolve, because while I agree, it's Fusion itself that is the "feature" that would benefit Resolve users, if BMD did a good job integrating it.

But what would you define as "as good job"? Would it be enough to replace the Color (and Deliver) tab entirely with a Fusion tab and have all the rendering occur in Fusion? OFX tools are already supported in Fusion, so it's really only the legacy grade node that would have to ported to a Fusion tool, which probably should have happened by now anyway so that Resolve settings could be shared with Fusion via Connect.

I suppose it's possible that you could have mutually exclusive tabs, too. The clips in the Edit tab could be toggled between being rendered in the legacy Resolve Color/Deliver process or in the new Fusion process. Fusion would have 100% feature coverage, but would potentially run slower and would have a new UI that not all Resolve users would want. But that would allow you to support both needs.

Alan or Pieter or Aurore or Kristof or whomever can jump in with their insights here, but I think if the "baggage" of Resolve was light enough it might be viable as a replacement for Fusion iff Fusion's feature set was maintained 100%. Older version of Resolve were HUGE memory hogs and took waaay too long to start up, but that's been partially addressed, so maybe having media bins instead of drag-and-drop might be acceptable especially if the result was a built in editing and sound solution for the same price.

Kel Philm wrote:Its a shame we cant get the same level of support they are giving to Resolve which seems to have a number of BMD staff answering the curly questions.

That hasn't been my experience at all. Resolve support is just as unstructured as Fusion's. Most of the time I don't get a satisfactory response at all, and when I do it's usually "that's as designed". I'm not saying there's anything wrong with providing that level of support for $299, but I don't see a big difference between Resolve and Fusion.

Some of the Fusion issues are strange to me because of the volumes involved. I know nothing about Resolve's install base, but what's the average size of the 5 largest sites? What's a "big customer" for Resolve when it comes to actual seats? Like are we talking 100? 1000? I suspect not since Fusion offers multi-seat packs while Resolve does not.

I think if you look on the Resolve forum you'll see much more interaction from BMD than on here and I feel Fusion is a product tha requires more support due to its complex nature.

It is intresting to speculate about the user base of Fusion, on a lot of the projects I work on there is a lot more VFX work performed than colour grading, but if you go by forum traffic there appears to be a lot more activity on the various Resolve forums. I guess Resolve just has very little competition in its space.

Chad Capeland wrote:Correct. There are individual tools (maybe only one tool) that are tile based, but Fusion itself is not.

I was misinformed on that then. Obviously a Fusion newbie here...

Also, Fusion uses a LOT more datatypes than Resolve does. Even arbitrary ones. You know more about Resolve than I do, but other than color images, what datatypes does it support in the Color page?

I think you're right about that; AFAIK Resolve only supports RGBA. And the alpha part isn't nearly as elegant as it is in, say Scratch. It takes just a few minutes to replace a sky or paint out a boom mic in Scratch or BaseLight or Mistika, but other than Scratch, their prices mostly keep them out of the indie community.

And yeah, I know we could add a Fusion page and get rid of the Color and Delivery pages entirely, but I don't think a lot of Resolve users would like that either.

Get rid of? Agreed, that would be... well, let's just say counterproductive.

Running Fusion inside Resolve and replacing Color/Deliver with new Fusion tools that 100% covered the feature set of those tabs would be MUCH easier.

Which would make Resolve a lot more like Mistika -- if the Resolve color corrector became a node in the composting space like in the current Mistika... well... that would probably make a lot of end users happy, and Resolve's competitors not so happy.

Chad Capeland wrote:But what would you define as "as good job"? Would it be enough to replace the Color (and Deliver) tab entirely with a Fusion tab and have all the rendering occur in Fusion? OFX tools are already supported in Fusion, so it's really only the legacy grade node that would have to ported to a Fusion tool, which probably should have happened by now anyway so that Resolve settings could be shared with Fusion via Connect.

I suppose the short version would be that it would have to continue providing the current UI and functionality while allowing a fully node-based, 3-D compositing environment within the same workflow. As for how, now that's a more involved question.

Update the current node graph to be a 3D compositing environment based on Fusion, with the Resolve color corrector as one of the available tools? That would turn Resolve into a poor man's Mistika or Rio.

I suppose it's possible that you could have mutually exclusive tabs, too. The clips in the Edit tab could be toggled between being rendered in the legacy Resolve Color/Deliver process or in the new Fusion process. Fusion would have 100% feature coverage, but would potentially run slower and would have a new UI that not all Resolve users would want. But that would allow you to support both needs.

If BMD were to go down that route, it would probably have to be a project wide setting in order to maintain consistency of color rendition throughout the timeline.

Alan or Pieter or Theo or Kristof or whomever can jump in with their insights here, but I think if the "baggage" of Resolve was light enough it might be viable as a replacement for Fusion iff Fusion's feature set was maintained 100%. Older version of Resolve were HUGE memory hogs and took waaay too long to start up, but that's been partially addressed, so maybe having media bins instead of drag-and-drop might be acceptable especially if the result was a built in editing and sound solution for the same price.

Even if Fusion were ported without its full suite of tools initially available, it would be a huge win for the end users. I'm sure that any solution for integrating Fusion and Resolve is a huge endeavor, but Fusion 9 wasn't that big an update, and we've heard next to nothing about Fusion since... so either it's dead or BMD has the Fusion team working on something big. Grant Petty isn't great a PR, but he does think long term. I don't think he's going to waste the Eyeon investment by dropping Fusion.

What exactly the company has planned is anybody's guess, but it's still fun to speculate while I await a review of the code I just submitted.

Rakesh Malik wrote:Right, because BMD should keep its focus tight... sorry, just getting tired of how many people apparently can't differentiate between "lose" and "loose" these days.

English isn't my first language, please don't use that to alter the discourse of the thread.

Rakesh Malik wrote:What exactly the company has planned is anybody's guess, but it's still fun to speculate while I await a review of the code I just submitted.

Guessing isn't good for business. We've invested many hours into pushing fusion back into the vfx game by fitting into our pipeline, making it play well with other software and investing time on training people to use it. (we could use some training material here too BMD)

Guessing and speculating on Fu's future is part of the problem. But I get what you're saying tho, its fun to look forward to a new version of a tool you care about; especially Fu there's always a few extra goodies on major updates.

alan bovine wrote:Guessing isn't good for business. We've invested many hours into pushing fusion back into the vfx game by fitting into our pipeline, making it play well with others and dropping time on training people to use it.

No argument here. Hopefully we'll get some news about its future soon... though most likely it will be another monster NAB announcement/demo.

Rakesh Malik wrote:I suppose the short version would be that it would have to continue providing the current UI and functionality while allowing a fully node-based, 3-D compositing environment within the same workflow. As for how, now that's a more involved question.

Assume it's mutually exclusive. You can't provide both workflows and UI's the the same data because the data isn't compatible internally.

Update the current node graph to be a 3D compositing environment based on Fusion, with the Resolve color corrector as one of the available tools? That would turn Resolve into a poor man's Mistika or Rio.

It's plausible if the update is replacing it.

You could fork any clip from Edit and choose to process it in Color/Deliver or Fusion but you could never mix the two (without rendering to a buffer and looping all the way back to the start).

To me, that gets you the best of everything. Legacy users continue to have their panel-centric Color tools and their bizarre Delivery tab while VFX users can use Fusion on clips that they can manage from within Edit.

If BMD were to go down that route, it would probably have to be a project wide setting in order to maintain consistency of color rendition throughout the timeline.

Not really. The entire Color grade node would be a tool inside of Fusion so you could match anything you wanted from the old system in the new system.

Even if Fusion were ported without its full suite of tools initially available

It would be. There's no reason not to. Once you have Fusion running as a process under Resolve the tools would all come over in one lump. The first 1% (from the user perspective) is the hardest part. The final 99% is almost automatic.

Fusion 9 wasn't that big an update

Actually, it was a HUGE update. Like a crazy amount. I can't think of any release since 5.0 that had as many changes.

and we've heard next to nothing about Fusion since...

Well, they laid off the two people responsible for telling you about Fusion, so that's probably the explanation there.

Chad Capeland wrote:Assume it's mutually exclusive. You can't provide both workflows and UI's the the same data because they data isn't compatible internally. ...It's plausible if the update is replacing it.

That's kind of where I was leaning. Anything else would probably end up being either hacky or a ground-up rewrite.

You could fork any clip from Edit and choose to process it in Color/Deliver or Fusion but you could never mix the two (without rendering to a buffer and looping all the way back to the start).

To me, that gets you the best of everything. Legacy users continue to have their panel-centric Color tools and their bizarre Delivery tab while VFX users can use Fusion on clips that they can manage from within Edit.

Yes, that would be pretty awesome. Especially if the Fusion forked clips are still fully integrated with galleries and all.

Not really. The entire Color grade node would be a tool inside of Fusion so you could match anything you wanted from the old system in the new system.

Which would amount to basically putting the Resolve color rendering in the Fusion pipeline, so I guess we're saying the same thing.

It would be. There's no reason not to. Once you have Fusion running as a process under Resolve the tools would all come over in one lump. The first 1% (from the user perspective) is the hardest part. The final 99% is almost automatic.

That's what I'd hoped, though didn't want to assume. I was just being conservative.

Actually, it was a HUGE update. Like a crazy amount. I can't think of any release since 5.0 that had as many changes.

I guess I've gotten spoiled by BMD's ginormous updates

Resolve 14: We just added a Final Cut tab and a ProTools competitor in one swell foop! Oh, and it's 10x faster than 12, btw.

Well, they laid off the two people responsible for telling you about Fusion, so that's probably the explanation there.

Except they aren't. That's the whole point of the thread. They're not doing anything to increase the adoption rate. They released a Linux version, which meets that criteria, but there's been nothing since other than layoffs, which is the exact opposite of interest in long-term adoption.

Bingo!

The strategy isn't working for Fusion because of the various reasons that have been mentioned in the posts above.

alan bovine wrote:Thats a bit out of context. Chad was referencing Rony and the others who were product specialist. They don't work on the development.

Rony and the others who were product specialists?How many were laid off?Before this thread I was just a user with pretty much no insight into internal matters and I supported Fusion because BMD was making some pretty radical steps which made me think that they have special plans for Fusion and their product line, but from what I read here the picture becomes darker and darker. Ultimately it sounds like Fusion is just a drag for BMD and wont get proper support any time soon.

ThomasManz wrote:How many were laid off?Before this thread I was just a user with pretty much no insight into internal matters and I supported Fusion because BMD was making some pretty radical steps which made me think that they have special plans for Fusion and their product line, but from what I read here the picture becomes darker and darker. Ultimately it sounds like Fusion is just a drag for BMD and wont get proper support any time soon.

This thread is about the missing support apparatus around Fusion, not about its development* No need to be alarmed/confused.

In fact, since BMD took over Fusion they've expanded the tool to work on two(!) more platforms in a ridiculous short time, and produced two major versions with *tons* of new features and core tools. Development wise they are doing just fine!

In my 15 years of using Fusion, I dare say its actually never been better time to be a Fusionista! The communities are flourishing with new users joining every day, and old grumpy compers coming out of their comp-caves to help out the new guys with great enthusiasm.

We just want BMD to support Fusion the same way Resolve receives support via the forums and training.

They have an outstanding product, just own up to supporting the communities with tutorials, footage, up to date help and product specialists....

* I have no insider knowledge of the development, but traditionally the core Fusion team have been a small but highly competent group of people. I can only imagine it got expanded during the multi-platform development phase.

alan bovine wrote:They have an outstanding product, just own up to supporting the communities with tutorials, footage, up to date help and product specialists....

I think two prime examples that Blackmagic should consider looking at when it comes to Fusion are SideFX and Redshift. Those two companies are truly kicking ass when it comes to their relationship with their customers, as well as their product support.

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:I think two prime examples that Blackmagic should consider looking at when it comes to Fusion are SideFX and Redshift. Those two companies are truly kicking ass when it comes to their relationship with their customers, as well as their product support.

+1 on that, I sent an email query to Redshift this morning about a few integration questions and got a bang on response from Panos within 30 mins. Reminds me of a friend who rang up Weta to get some details about an internship and the phone was answered by Peter Jackson (it turned out to be after hours) who proceeded to talk them in detail on what they needed to do.

Although I'm not a high end Fusion user, I have been using it for about 17-18 years (with a brief foray into Quantel territory), mainly for motion graphics. I rely on it heavily as a sole trader/freelancer, so having software that is dependable with good support is absolutely essential.

I have been pretty disappointed by the seemingly complete lack of support as a long term user. I had to stop using F8 and stick with F7 for a year until F9 was released because F8 crashed/froze so often. I sent a number of emails to the nearest reseller in Australia (I'm in NZ) but got zero follow through as to the issues I documented.Then there's the lack of official tutorial and training information from BMD. Compared to the likes of Adobe, where AE users have a mountain of amazing assets/training info to work with, Fusion looks extremely lacking.For example, trying to find good information on Fusion's new 3D camera tracking features and how to use them was a joke. It was only through the good grace of a user who had posted a Youtube video that I managed to learn something about it. Why create a great feature and then not make it relatively easy to learn that new feature?Don't get me wrong, I really like Fusion, but if I had the patience and time I would probably retrain in AE and drop Fusion.As already mentioned, perhaps BMD only bought this as a sideline so they could say they have a compositing tool and to be able to get at the code for other products. Who knows? Either way, they are doing their many loyal customers a disservice - and I cannot see how Fusion has any future long term as it currently stands. Hope to be wrong!

Jules Clark wrote:As already mentioned, perhaps BMD only bought this as a sideline so they could say they have a compositing tool and to be able to get at the code for other products. Who knows? Either way, they are doing their many loyal customers a disservice - and I cannot see how Fusion has any future long term as it currently stands. Hope to be wrong!

Right now, Resolve is the only high end color suite that doesn't have a reasonably robust compositing toolkit built in. Some of them rival Nuke (Mistika), some are more like AfterFX (Scratch).

Fusion = Nothing for years, falling further and further behind other platforms.BMD take over, update after update after update, two more platforms, price within range of every possible user, old Fusion users moaning like a bunch of entitled nay spoilt little kids.You lot want to shut up and get on with your life, if Fusion isn't good enough for you then move on and stop trying to harm the company by talking crap.

Win Conway wrote:Fusion = Nothing for years, falling further and further behind other platforms.BMD take over, update after update after update, two more platforms, price within range of every possible user, old Fusion users moaning like a bunch of entitled nay spoilt little kids.You lot want to shut up and get on with your life, if Fusion isn't good enough for you then move on and stop trying to harm the company by talking crap.

You're joking...right?

Everyone in this thread realizes Fusion's potential and wants to see it thrive and not wither away. The reason why everyone is eager for Blackmagic to take a more active role in the app is because everyone wants Fusion to get better and better and dominate once more over the likes of Nuke.

All the pieces parts are already there. What we're asking for are simple solutions like better tutorials to get new users up to speed quickly, and more official communication and involvement in these forums.

More like old Fusion users whining that we're doing all the work of supporting someone else's software with little to no compensation for it. There really ought to be someone who draws a paycheck from Blackmagic doing at least a little bit of this.

Don't throw mud on the people who are providing so much value to the community. We love Fusion and want to see it prosper. We just wish there was some indication that Blackmagic did, too.

Bryan Ray wrote:More like old Fusion users whining that we're doing all the work of supporting someone else's software with little to no compensation for it. There really ought to be someone who draws a paycheck from Blackmagic doing at least a little bit of this.

The bad thing is, there is no paycheck coming for anyone when revenue stream dries up because everything is free forever. Only way to keep Fusion development and support going is growing paying user base in leaps and bounds, but this also needs LOTS of money for advertising, tutorials, "evangelists" (damn this is stupid word) and whatnot, trying to eat into already saturated market. Cat video makers will not buy Studio version, so users must be ripped from AE and N user base and it must be done constantly (because upgrades are free). Another way is subsidising it with hardware sales, but I can't see any long-term vision in this.

Currently it seems to me that only way to crawl out of the hole is to pull the s*it together and release a new branch (like Studio is to Lite) with new pricing model or provide paid support either as literally paid support, maintenance or upgrade versions. If BM sold cameras like software (buy one camera now, all future cameras are free) it would be out of business.

I just want software that's stable (as much as possible) and I would like support when things go wrong - and I'm happy to pay for it. It's a fair request - hardly whining.

In regards to the product price, I am amazed that BMD do any Fusion updates when the price is so low and they offer a fully usable free version.I actually don't remember having paid a subscription fee in probably 2 years at least and I'm still able to download and use the most recent updates. How can a company support a product if they aren't even collecting their customer subs? It's not a good business model.I'd rather pay more for Fusion Studio knowing that there's a Fusion expert at BMD who will answer an email within 48hrs when there's a technical issue. When I had an issue with my HP workstation I was able to get a tech person from HP to log in remotely, diagnose and repair the issue within a day. That kind of service is worth the premium I paid for the system.Customers will pay if it helps them to minimise downtime, especially if the job they're working on has a critical deadline and costs if it's not getting finished in time.

Hendrik Proosa wrote: Another way is subsidising it with hardware sales, but I can't see any long-term vision in this.

BMD is a hardware company. It wants customers to be loyal to Resolve, because that sells BMD stuff. More Resolve users = more control panel sales, more DeckLink card sales, more UltraStudio sales, etc.

There are now panels for color grading, and consoles for audio mixing... what are the odds that we'll see some for editors?

Not directly, but if tighter integration with Resolve gets more people onto Resolve, then it sells more panels.

One of the things that Resolve is weak in by itself is compositing. In Scratch or BaseLight or Mistika for example it's quite easy to paint out a boom mic, replace a sky, and that sort of thing, without using an external tool.

If product support staff existed, most of your bullet points could be covered. At least you could point to someone and say "go shoot some VFX plates and make a tutorial" or "go find a customer project we can profile on Splice" or "some reseller has a client that wants a solution for X, work with them and then document the solution".

Without that, the options are limited. Or so I assume, I make colored rectangles for a living, not promote a software product successfully, so my opinion isn't worth a lot.

Well there is a reason why this software carries the price of FREE and $299. Something has to give and one of those things is customer support. Usually efficient companies would hire one or two gurus to hang on the forums and deal with issues but I guess that's not an option here.

With eyeOn it was different. First of all product was expensive, like very expensive but all that money gave you stable releases and support. Truth be told they cut back on in-app features roll outs which were very slow.

My main concern is that BMD is stuck with stability development. Since they've messed with the source code reliability has went downhill expectably, but it has not matured yet which is concerning. Whole F8 should have been one giant beta program instead. It's a shame cause Windows F7 was rock solid when you counter in the performance and how easy going it was. I just wish they've put funds and effort to develop both Windows and Mac version parallel with their own source codes. I completely understand that majority of BMD customers are prosumers working on Macs and rightfully so their priority was in bring in the Mac version but the outcome of such venture is that right now we are running some weird Mac hybrid port on Windows just like Resolve is.